The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Increasingly, public and private communications networks are being built and expanded using various packet technologies, such as Internet Protocol (IP). Note, nothing described or referenced in this document is admitted as prior art to this application unless explicitly so stated.
With the growing popularity of the Internet, providing speedy access to a requested location on the Internet is fast becoming a significant issue. For example, when a popular web page is hosted by a single computer, the Internet traffic to that computer can be overwhelming. To manage this problem, several computers can be utilized to host the same web page such that each hosting computer, typically referred to as a content server, maintains a copy of the web page. The use of multiple computers to host a network service, such as a web page, is typically referred to as mirrored services. If there are many content servers at the same location, then the network connection to that location can become choked during a time of high Internet traffic. To avoid choking the network connection, mirrored content servers are often located at different sites.